


The Gay Parts of Tonight

by howyousay_anarchy



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Fluff and Angst, For the angst, Gen, Human Disaster Aaron Burr, I'm Sorry, M/M, The gay parts of tonight, misheard lyrics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-16
Updated: 2018-05-23
Packaged: 2018-10-05 21:42:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10317572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/howyousay_anarchy/pseuds/howyousay_anarchy
Summary: There was a moment that history never remembered in the bar that day, among the millions of stories of a new 'tonight'. Alexander Hamilton raises his bottle; the liquid inside shines. John Laurens raises his eyebrows in accordance, his eyes shining with mirth.AKA there’s too much lams angst and I can’t stop writing it still.





	1. The Gays Are Sad

 

“They'll leave the gay parts out tonight.” - Incorrect Hamilton lyrics, “The Story of Tonight”

 

The story of tonight, unsurprisingly, started about an hour ago with an abundant amount of alcohol.

Burr is sulking in the corner, as usual, along with a disgruntled, scornful-looking Samuel Seabury, looking as if he is a spoiled cat that got his tail pulled on. The bastard deserves it, whatever it is.

Lafayette is already against the bar talking (up/to) Adrienne in a slurred French accent as Washington mixed a drink, surveying the chaotic battlefield with furrowed brows. Mulligan had tied a scarf around his hair before they headed out today, pretending it was a bandana and ignoring Lafayette's complaints that it was his silk, _mon ami, Herc- merde._ John is at his usual neat little annexation of space at the bar, handing people drinks while wiping his hands momentarily on his turtle apron.

“Oh go get fucked by a horse!” John hears Hercules shout to Burr with an air of assured knowledge. John sniggers, and makes a note to himself to ask Herc about his sudden interest in horsing around.

Hey, didn't Herc grow up on a farm or something?

Suddenly, the doors blow open and the tacky old bell titters from under the door, a man steps into the (W)hole Shot bar (named aptly after an ambitious zealot of an Englishman who downed a shot as one of the bar’s first customers, took out a pistol, and proceeded to shoot a hole into the bar table). John looks up, and his eyes widen. The guy couldn’t be more than 20, but there was something in his starved frame, an inspired glint in his eyes. Or that could be just the intense need for alcoholic satiation.

But eventually, John realized the guy wasn’t here for the liquor but rather for Burr, brooding, with a bottle of bourbon as his only company.

Not anymore, apparently.

Good for them.

\----NOW FOR DA BURR-RITO----

\----GUESS WHAT’S MY INS-BURR-RATION----

\----AIN’T IT BURR-FECT----

“Pardon me, are you Aaron Burr, sir?” The young man in front of him is- young. Repetitive, Burr knows, but it's been a long time since he's seen someone with that much excited charisma who looked barely 20.

It seems the probability of private bonding time with his bourbon is dead.

So it goes.

“That depends, who's asking?”

“Oh sure, sir. I'm Alexander Hamilton, I'm at your service, sir,” he looks relieved, as if thinking: _cultural norms, that I can rely on._ “I have been looking for you.” Disturbing.

“I'm getting nervous.”

“Sir, I heard your name at Princeton,” he continues, oblivious, “I was seeking an accelerated course of study when I got sort of out of sorts with a buddy of yours.”

Burr snorts.

“I may have punched him, it's a blur, sir. He handles the financials?” Oh, the fool. Burr sort of wants to a), shake the stupidity out of him, b), take him home like a stray dog and give him what is probably one of the first decent meals Hamilton has had in a long time, and c) lecture to him on appropriate responses to give to bursars when they ask for money. He does none of them: Burr doesn’t have the responsibility to take care of a boy too young to be here.

“You punched the bursar?”

“Yes, I wanted to do what _you_ did: graduate in two then join the revolution-” Burr wisely doesn't say anything about his ill-wishes among his thoughts on the revolution.

“He looked at me like I was stupid, I'm not stupid!” Alexander expressed himself violently, with the nonverbal and worryingly indignant phrase of “!!!1!1!1!111!” at the end of his sentence.

“So how'd you do it? How’d you graduate so fast?”

“It was my parent’s dying wish before they passed.”

And god damn the man, he actually keeps going, even more excited now. Burr doesn’t know if it’s insensitivity or something else, but he listens. “You're an orphan, of course! I'm an orphan. God, I wish there was a war then we could prove that we’re worth more than _anyone_ bargained for!”

Ha! “Can I buy you a drink?”

“That would be nice,” Hamilton says, his face splitting into a shy smile.

“While we're talking let me offer you some free advice.” Burr walks to get a drink, Hamilton with him. It’s sort of nice to be talking to someone. Burr keeps a polite tilt on his face and makes sure it doesn’t become an actual smile.

“Of course, sir.”

“Talk less, smile more,” Burr levels a winning flash of his teeth at Hamilton this time.

Hamilton looks indignant, almost hurt. “Ha,” he chuckles wryly.

“Don’t let them know what you’re against or what you’re for.”

“You can’t be serious-” Hamilton has too many feelings to be joining a revolution for men twice his size and age. Burr cuts him off. It’s regretful, really.

“You want to get ahead?”

_“Yes!”_

“Fools who runs their mouths off wind up dead.”

Hamilton stares at him, then stares some more. His waistcoat is too big for him. “You-”

He never finishes.

Burr chugs his bourbon for a while, then even gestures it towards Hamilton. He shakes his head. It’s bitter, so Burr levels the same winning smile at Hamilton again.

Disappointment, at least, Burr is familiar with.

(Sing to tune of YMCA)

\----WHERE YOU CAN CURSE THE REDCOATS----

\----MEET A LOT OF COOL DUDES ----

\----AND FELLATE YOUR BESTIE IN MORNING LIGHT----

John works a bit more for a while before he gets so furious at Seabury that he actually throws down a rag onto the bar table (Hercules’ rag that John snatched from him that he barely managed to not throw at Seabury’s damned pug face instead.) He has half the mind to tell Seabury that he should take King George and stuff it up so far up his royal, sanctimonious ass that he would barf up his repetition of speeches before the guy badgering Burr puts his fist onto John’s bar and knocks it, all gentlemanly.

“Hold up,” John tells the guy before swerving onto Seabury and swatting him, hard, with the rag.

“If you lecture anymore about King George, I will steal his stupid little crown and stuff it so far up your ass that it will debilitate you permanently. And then I’ll shoot you.”

Seabury scampers.

John stares as Seabury retreats and informs the nameless guy in the most cavalier way he could, “That bar is made of mahogany.”

The guy stares, too, not at the retreating Seabury, but rather at John, “Alexander Hamilton,” he extend his hand to John with a ten dollar bill and a handshake, “I need a drink.”

\----LAFAYETTE: SI’DOWN YOU FAT MOTHERFUCKERSS----

\----DRINKS ALL AROUND----

\----IT’S FUCKING REVOLUTION TIME----

Lafayette doesn’t know when “I need a drink” changed to a sweeping declaration of “fuck the patriarchy!” with glasses clinking all around (“And fuck King George and Seabury!”), but he is complacent among the mayhem.

Alexander, a man fed by only knowledge (but not by his own volition, of that Lafayette is sure) is an automatic addition to their group.

Self-advertised revolutionary abolitionists are nothing but tripe in the startling footprint of history. Hercules and John are the ones who want to make the most difference. Lafayette knows them: knows that his dear friend Laurens who chugs Sam Adams with assured aggression always looks shaken after visits back to the Carolinas; knows that Hercules, of all his strengths, doesn’t stand a chance against his family when they’re taunting him about “that quaint little tailoring apprenticeship you've got”.

(They need John for his politics and sometimes inane turtles, Herc to keep them thinking of preceding glory days, and Lafayette supposes he’s there to give them just a pinch of romanticism. He’s from France, after all. The demand of livid _“casse toi”_ s never decreases, and neither does the need for a revolution, for fuck’s sake.)

He does not articulate well, Lafayette knows. The English language does little to elucidate him in the muddle of emotions he has, and for that reason, he has Adri. Lovely, intelligent Adri who showers him with regards from France and friendship that he hoped would someday turn into something more. Lafayette does not say it out loud, Lord forbid, but there's a warmth in his chest next to the imaginary medal Mulligan said he would someday carry.

He is proud, which is what he tells John and Hercules. Hamilton overhears and Lafayette catches the tail of his shy smile.

(Sing to tune of “Schyler Sisters”)

\----Angelica~----

\----Eliza...----

\----HERCULES MULLIGAN!----

Hercules likes the new guy.

He’s met him before, and had liked him then with the same strike of certainty.

He’s a bit ballistic, a bit crazed, and just on the side of rightfully egotistical. In other words: he’s perfect.

(Which he’s sure Laurens has noticed.)

His friend’s sexual orientation is surely a part of his business. At least, Hercules wishes that he is close enough to John for it to be a part of his business. The non-determinate in their friendship, sure. But after all, he watches out for Laurens, who draws turtles and wears cartoon aprons and is dorkily adorable even when undeniably smashed into alcoholism. Especially when undeniably smashed into alcoholism.

On the other hand, he knows little of the Laurens that smashes himself into the thousands of documents on protecting liberty and puts his work before his health. The one who hates his father but hates himself more. The one Lafayette told him about in stalling words once, when John left, terse and strained, for his childhood home.

He worries too, about Hamilton. The guy is barely twenty and just got here, all the way from the Caribbeans. Impressive, but honestly that could be kind of draining. The dude is so wiry that it takes practically nothing for him to lean off to one side, burdened with weight. And Laurens told him about that ten dollar bill Hamilton clenched in his hand. Hercules is damned sure that's the only money the guy’s got.

But Hercules will always be helping them, no matter what. After all, he always gets (the fuck) back up again.

\----I AM ALEX----

\----smol bean----

\----HAMILTON----

Alexander feels- no, Alexander simply cannot afford to feel- Alexander is content.

The bar is dingy at best, but he knows there are few, limited things in the world that can make him feel that way. The list: a blank page waiting for a deliverance, hope for better days to come, and now his new friends.

Hercules is a brute of a man. Alexander met him first, through Hugh Mulligan, Mulligan’s brother. In a stiff room of unattainable luxuries, a boyishly boisterous man ranted about fashion, of all things, and a smaller man bolted up, his spine suddenly rod-like straight when he hears the words: “-now is my chance…” The rest of the conversation was fiercely compiled together in deep, exciting voices until the shop had to be closed and Hamilton left with an unnoticed green waistcoat and a smile, both subtly coerced onto him. (Didn’t Mulligan tell him to try something _new_ …?)

Lafayette had gallivanted up to him earlier in the night. With increasing convictions, Alexander is starting to believe that the man galivants, period, as an action repeated thoroughly at all times. But despite the swagger in his hips, Lafayette has a clairvoyance in his eyes that liquor can not deter. Listen: their conversation had started like this, and would be this way for many years to come. _Monsieur Hamilton, Monsieur Lafayette._

And then there was John. While Mulligan shined with a need to accomplish and Lafayette gallivanted, John simply exists, throughout all tenses. One moment, Alex did not know him, and the next, he was there, a picture of an indescribable, lovely kind of fierceness.

And Hamilton, awed with an incredible yearning to just _stay_ , had extended a hand. (His mother told him once to be wary of things that just unmitigatedly are. Because permanent means strong, and for Alexander, who sways people to his sides, that is dangerous. _“Roots cannot be toppled,”_ he remembers her saying.) But _John_ , who took a good look at him, gave him a beer, shook his hand that had clung ten dollars, and deftly avoided the payment- John _fits_.

\----insert a fuckwit inserting joke about fitting in a more sexual way here----

\----start playing a happier version “Who Lives Who Dies Who Tells Your Story” in your brain here---

\----or Hallelujah by Panic!----

(There is a moment that history never remembered in the bar that day, among the millions of stories of a new “tonight”.

The first one is condensed in polite curiosity.

With a warm twist of his lips, John Laurens delivers, “Long way from home, then? There’s a lot of local beers with different names.”

Alexander Hamilton raises his gaze in amusement, inspecting the name of a nearby bottle, “There’s no need, I’ll have a Sam Adams. And as for a home,” He pauses, waiting, thinking, perhaps, because it’s not until John hands him a beer that he finally finishes his sentence.

Alexander Hamilton raises his bottle; the liquid inside shines. John Laurens raises his eyebrows in accordance, his eyes shining with mirth.

“As for a home, I think I’ve found something quite my style.” )


	2. John Needs Help

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I literally don’t know what this is

John often finds himself lost in Hamilton's presence.  
They're sitting by the sides of their desks, heads bent down and words flowing between when Hamilton suddenly goes:  
"Betsy is excited for the wedding."  
John looks up and looks down again. He makes more than a visible effort to not answer, "Good for her" in the way that he desperately wants to. He churns out a noncommittal sound of congratulations.  
"I think her father has given us a venue," Hamilton insists.  
John imagines Elizabeth Schuyler happy, twirling in Hamilton's arms, contrasting him handsomely in her wedding gown. He thinks of her smiling radiantly as he smiles right back, looking into her face as if he found answers, not more questions, unlike the way he often looked at John. He thinks about how much he would make sense if he said that Hamilton is going to be the venue for the wedding, and he stops.  
Hamilton grins at him then, open and assured despite the stagnant air between them. John darts a glance: the expression feels too sweet, but he can’t help it.  
He turns to face him, but he finds that he does not understand Hamilton any more than he does when they're not face to face.


End file.
